Friday, August 17, 2012

David Chislett's Poetry from South Africa

I would like to welcome a guest blogger from a thousand plus miles away. David Chislett is a very versatile writer and speaker, and it is a pleasure to have him as a guest today.

Poetry
from Johannesburg, South Africa

My name is David Chislett and I am a poet.
Well, a writer all round really, but most recently I published a collection of
my poetry. I live in Johannesburg in South Africa. Right now, it is snowing.
It’s not supposed to here, but there you go!

I have been writing poetry since 1981 but
never really thought much about doing anything else with it other than write.
Then in 2001 I created a series of short story books for unknown writers here
in South Africa and by 2010, I had another 4 books out. Suddenly, it seemed
like time to publish my poems.

The book is called For You Or Someone Like You
and it consists of 90 poems. The 90 were selected from about 250 poems that I
wrote and posted on Facebook over and 18 month period. As such, there is no
overall subject or theme for this collection. Rather it is a window into my
life and mind at a specific period of time.

Broadly speaking however, I deal with ideas
and issues around identity, meaning and purpose in my writing. These I explore
either as internal landscapes or by reflecting on the natural world around me.

I grew up during Apartheid in South Africa,
did military service here, voted for freedom in our 1st democratic
elections, have travelled extensively and studied further. Being a New South
African has given me an interesting and unique perspective on life and I like
to think my poetry reflects this.

I am a serial entrepreneur as well as
writer and as a result I have gone the self-publishing route with my last 2
books (including this one) This means I can do all sorts of cool things with my
books. If you visit www.foryouorsomeonelikeyou.com
you will see what I mean!

One of these cool things was to get a group
of established song-writers here in South Africa to take a poem each and turn
it into a song which I have released on an album as a limited edition, web-sale
only value-add to the book. As you can see, it’s all set up with PayPal so you
can buy from anywhere in the world and I will send to anywhere too!

The Doug Simpson Story

Doug Simpson is a retired high school teacher who has turned his talents to writing. His first novel, a spiritual mystery titled Soul Awakening, was published in the United States in October of 2011, by Booklocker. It was reissued in October of 2012 by 5 Prince Publishing as Soul Awakening, Book I of the Dacque Chronicles. For further details visit them at http://5princebooks.com/. It is available in print and eBook format through most bookstores around the world. Soul Rescue, Book II of the Dacque Chronicles will be published in November of 2012. His magazine and website articles have been published in 2010 to 2012 in Australia, Canada, France, India, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. His articles can be accessed through his website at http://dousimp.mnsi.net.